Why Are You Crying?

Why Now?

After decades of slavery, the time had finally arrived for the Jewish people’s liberation. What prompted G-d to remember them were their painful, heart rending cries to G-d, as the Torah relates in this week’s parsha:

“After many days had passed the king of Egypt died. The children of Israel groaned from the hard work, and they cried out. Their cries, caused by the hard work, went up to G-d. G-d heard their cry, and G-d remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. G-d saw the children of Israel, and G-d knew.”

The question can be asked, why did G-d hear their cries only after decades of torturous oppression and not sooner? Surely their cries were heard way before Pharaoh died.

One suggestion is that G-d “could not” have responded to their cries beforehand because He had already decreed that the children of Israel would be in Egyptian exile for 400 years (counting the years from G-d’s promise to Abraham at the Covenant Between the Pieces).

However, this answer is inadequate for several reasons:

First, if the 400 years had passed and it was time for the children of Israel to be liberated, why did G-d need to hear their cries to liberate them?

Second, even if G-d could not liberate them earlier because He had already decreed that they would remain in Egyptian bondage for 400 years, why couldn’t He, at the very least, have reduced their pain and suffering to a more “manageable” level in response to their cries? Why did the bondage become increasingly more brutal?

We also have to understand what does the death of the king of Egypt have to do with their suffering?

Another question relates to the apparent repetition in the foregoing text. First it says that “G-d heard their cry,” followed by “G-d saw the children of Israel,” which is then followed by “and G-d knew [them].

Redirecting their Cries

One can answer these questions based on a novel interpretation of these verses contained in the Chassidic work Tiferes Shlomo.

We could reasonably assume that the Jewish slaves cried out to G-d throughout the years of their back-breaking and agonizing bondage.

Ultimately, they realized that their cries arose from a focus on their own physical pain and suffering. These were self-centered lamentations. To be sure, G-d never denies us the right to cry out to Him when we experience pain and anguish, and as a merciful Father, He feels our pain. Nevertheless, G-d was waiting for the children of Israel to be “liberated” from their self-absorption and cry out to Him on a more sophisticated and spiritual level.

Finally, the children of Israel took this to heart and redirected their pleas to G-d to liberation from their suffering for a positive, selfless and spiritual end. They began to cry out to G-d to be liberated from their stifling exile experience in order to be free to serve G-d with joy.

Tiferes Shlomo finds a novel meaning to the Hebrew word va’ye’anchu. Instead of the simple meaning, which is “they groaned,” he relates it to a cognate word “Noach” and translates it as “rest” or “subside.”

Based on Tiferes Shlomo’s novel translations the verses can be interpreted in the following way:

“After many days had passed the king of Egypt died. The children of Israel’s pain from the hard work subsided because they no longer focused on the physical pain caused by the hard labor… Instead, the cry caused by hard work was sublimated; it was now motivated by their desire for a relationship with G-d that was compromised because of the suffering.

According to this novel reinterpretation of the Biblical text, the children of Israel’s response to their own pain and suffering was redirected and sublimated into a spiritual expression of anguish. Their pain at not being able to serve G-d properly was greater than their physical pain.

Tiferes Shlomo explains that what made this transformation so potent was the fact that when they lamented that their spiritual relationship with G-d was hampered by harsh slavery, their prayers to G-d were now in sync with G-d’s own prayers. The Talmud (Berachos 7a) states that G-d also prays for His children. When we pray because we cherish our relationship with G-d it mirrors and merges with G-d’s prayer, which expresses His concern for and relationship with us.

Ready for Redemption

With this introduction, we can turn again to the three questions posed above.

The first question was, why did G-d hear their cries only after decades of torturous oppression and not sooner?

The answer is that G-d wanted the Jewish people to recognize their unique relationship with Him. He wanted them not just to cry out for the pain they were experiencing but to use that pain to find a way of expressing their desire to get closer to G-d. The entire Egyptian bondage was intended to refine them spiritually before they received the Torah at Mount Sinai. Once they attained this more sophisticated level of praying to G-d, they were ready for the Sinai experience; the wedding between G-d and the Jewish people.

This approach to the text sheds light on the significance of the death of the king of Egypt. His death can be understood as a metaphor. The words “the king of Egypt” can also be understood to mean the power of the Egyptian exile and its control over the children of Israel. The death of the king of Egypt thus means that the spiritually stifling power of Egypt, which made them slaves in both the physical and spiritual sense of the word, had lost some of its potency. And because the power of Egypt had weakened, the Jewish people were able to experience a more liberated form of crying out to G-d.

Hearing, Seeing and Knowing

We can now also understand why the Torah first says that “G-d heard their cry,” followed by “G-d saw the children of Israel,” which is then followed by “and G-d knew [them]. These three expressions relate to the incremental elevation of the children of Israel in the way they got closer to G-d. At first, G-d “heard” them, implying that there was a distance between them. It then rose to the level of G-d “seeing” them, implying closeness, and culminating with G-d “knowing” them, by which we are meant to understand that there was now an intimate bond between G-d and the children of Israel; their prayers had merged.